This was not an honor killing this was neglect. Before all the ‘this has nothing to do with islam’ types show up remember not one muslim turned this couple into authorities and by all accounts before she converted to islam-muslim convert Angela Gordon was a good mother.
I will not claim that islam was responsible but it contributed. Closed societies like islam make it possible for 3rd world values to thrive in the west.
I do not post stories like this to embarrass islam but to expose it.
This neighborhood also needs some scrutiny, muslims and non muslims alike, someone knew something and did nothing.
By David Williams and David Wilkes, 21st May 2008, daily mail
It was a scene even experienced paramedics never expected to see in Britain in 2008.
Lying on mattresses in a squalid bedroom were six starving children, all seriously emaciated.
For one, seven- year- old Khyra Ishaq, rescue came too late. She died in hospital hours later.
Last night it emerged that Khyra, her brothers and sisters were so hungry they even stole bread put out for birds in nearby gardens.
Horrified neighbours in Handsworth, Birmingham, said the children had been taken out of school earlier this year after being bullied.
But no one had seen them in the street for well over a month.
Agonised questions were being asked about how yet another child could have been allowed to die such an appalling death.
Local MP Khalid Mahmood angrily demanded an inquiry – accusing both the local education authority and social services of ‘ huge incompetence’.
He claimed that at least one social worker had visited the family after the children were taken out of school but there had been no follow-up visits.
Khyra’s mother Angela Gordon, 33, and her live-in boyfriend Junaid Abuhamza, 29, have appeared in court accused of neglect and been remanded in custody.
Court officials said they will face a second charge of causing or allowing the death of a child when they appear again next week.
The case has chilling similarities to that of eight-year-old Victoria Climbie, whose death from neglect and abuse at the hands of her aunt and her boyfriend in February 2000 was meant to lead to a massive overhaul of child protection.
Now Khyra’s death has brought the same questions about how a child could have been allowed to die of hunger and whether child protection officers, teachers, doctors or neighbours were aware the family had problems.
The horror came to light when paramedics were called to the house in the early hours of Saturday. They were told a girl was having breathing difficulties.
But after seeing the state of Khyra, her three brothers, aged 12, nine and eight, and two sisters, aged 11 and four, they called police.
One paramedic was said to have been in tears.
Miss Gordon – a Muslim convert whose family came to Britain from Jamaica – had told her neighbours the children had been bullied at school, apparently because they wore Muslim clothes.
She was said to have had been making arrangements for them to be taught at home – a pile of English and Maths teaching books could be clearly seen on one of the window ledges yesterday.
Labour MP Mr Mahmood said: “It just beggars belief that we have allowed this to happen. I understand there was at least one visit by an education social worker after the children left school, but not one follow-up visit.
“I find that an amazing dereliction of duty that they have not followed it through. There is some sort of structural failure here. It should not have been allowed to get to this stage. (more…)
Opinionated Infidels